How do I enable fancy apt colours and progress bars?

Question

I've heard that apt has a new fancy colour and progress bar feature, but that I have to manually enable it.

How do I do this?

Answer 1

For 14.04 and newer:

Make a file in: /etc/apt/apt.conf.d:

sudoedit /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99progressbar

Then add these contents:

Dpkg::Progress-Fancy "1";

And save the file.

Then if your umask was not 0027, (i.e. it might also be 0023), then also set this new file's permissions to 644 (i.e. -rw-r--r--) as follows:

$ chmod 644 99progressbar

(Without this permission correction things like Debian's reportbug will stop working.)

Now enjoy apt progress bars in all their glory:

You can use them with these commands for a nice new apt experience:

apt update
apt install
apt upgrade

Run apt by itself for the list of commands. Colors are enabled by default for apt, and do not affect apt-get.

Colors:

You can also tweak the color of the progress bar by adding this as well:

Dpkg::Progress-Fancy::Progress-Bg "%1b[40m"; 

The colors are based on ANSI Color codes, look at this chart as a reference.

Sources:

• Michael Vogt's blogpost on apt 1.0

Answer 2

The -o option allows to change the behavior temporarily. I described it here:

It's just not an apt-get default, but also available for apt-get, run it with

-o Dpkg::Progress-Fancy="1"

for example

sudo apt-get -o Dpkg::Progress-Fancy="1" install alpine-pico

Answer 3

For default colors

In addition to Jorge Castro's excellent answer, you can add an extra line to the /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99progressbar file:

Dpkg::Progress-Fancy "1";
APT::Color "1";

This will enable the default colors for apt. I found it by accident while reading the apt man page:

The apt command is meant to be pleasant for end users and does not need to be backward compatible like apt-get(8). Therefore some options are different:

• The option DPkgPM::Progress-Fancy is enabled.

• The option APT::Color is enabled.